Hürtgen

The "Battle of the Bulge" was going on 75 years ago now. Much less remembered is the long and futile fight preceding it in the Hürtgen forest, where Dad's cousin, Paul Kristan, was killed.

Paul was from the mortician side of the family. I understand he and Dad were close growing up. While Dad ended up in the Air Corps, Paul was a medic with the 1st Infantry. The site "honorstates.org"says he "experienced a traumatic event which resulted in loss of life on November 19, 1944." Before he died, he won a Silver Star for rescuing a wounded man under fire.

A lot of 'traumatic events" occurred in that battle, and many of them ended up at the Henri-Chappelle cemetery, including Paul:

Wikipedia recounts what was happening about that time:

The VII (U.S.) Corps, First Army attacked 16 November 1944, with 1st Inf Div, 4th Inf Div, 104th Inf Div, and CCR 5th AD to clear Huertgen Forest and the path of First Army to the Rur River. After heavy fighting, primarily by the 4th Infantry Division, VII Corps' attack ground to a halt. 

The mostly forgotten Hürtgen fight is called "the longest single battle the U.S. Army has ever fought." What were they trying to accomplish?

The U.S. commanders' initial goal was to pin down German forces in the area to keep them from reinforcing the front lines farther north in the Battle of Aachen, where the US forces were fighting against the Siegfried Line network of fortified industrial towns and villages speckled with pillboxes, tank traps, and minefields.

It didn't go very well, and it ended when the German Ardennes Offensive began. It seems like a horrible botch from what I have read. Wikipedia sums up the consensus:

Historical discussion revolves around whether or not the American battle plan made any operational or tactical sense. One analysis^{[12]:240–241} is that the Allies under-estimated the strength and determination remaining in the psyche of the German soldier, believing his fighting spirit had collapsed under the stress of the Normandy breakout and the reduction of the Falaise Pocket.

American commanders, in particular, misunderstood the impassability of the dense Hürtgen Forest, and its effects of reducing artillery effectiveness and making air support impracticable. The better alternative - breaking through south-east out into the open valley, where their advantages in mobility and airpower could come into play, and then heading northeast towards the actual objectives - seems not to have been really considered by the higher headquarters.^[26]

Wikipedia says there were 33,000 American casualties in this battle. The Battle of the Bulge that followed is better remembered, but the guys killed in Hürtgen Forest, like Paul Kristan, were just as brave, and just as killed, as their colleagues in the Ardennes. The only difference was the Battle of the Bulge accomplished something.